Books: "Inverting The Pyramid" By Jonathan Wilson

 

Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics

By Jonathan Wilson

Bold Type Books; paperback, 528 pages; $24.99

Jonathan Wilson has authored eight books, including this one, which was named the NSC Football Book of the Year in 2009 and won the Premio Antonio Ghirelli prize as Italian soccer book of the year in 2013. He is the founder and editor of the soccer quarterly the Blizzard, and he writes for the Guardian, FoxSoccer, and Sports Illustrated, as well as being a columnist for World Soccer.

This is the fifteenth-anniversary edition of Inverting The Pyramid, a book that was an outgrowth of an article he wrote in 2005 for the renowned soccer magazine FourFourTwo. This incredibly researched book covers how much modern international football has evolved, and how that has affected the lives of players, coaches, and fans. 

Wilson brings the book right up to the 2022 World Cup, which was won by Argentina and Lionel Messi. He focuses on the influence of the great Spanish, German, and Portuguese tacticians of the last decade. There is a continuation of the discussion broached in his prior version, about the influence of Pep Guardiola, which started when he turned Barcelona into a global power and now has enjoyed immense success with Manchester City, and how his possession-heavy model is better compares the more frenetic approach, characterized by merging the press with rapid transitions, that originated in Germany.

As much as this book is an analysis of tactics, it is a history of the sport of soccer around the world. While many places came to be the birthplace of the sport, from Rome to Greece, Mexico, Egypt, and Japan, Wilson feels that the roots of what we watch now came out of the mob game of medieval Britain. 

It wasn't until the early 19th century that there was a coherent set of rules was set, and the game grew rapidly with the establishment of the FA (yes the same one today that hosts the year-long FA Cup among all English clubs at all levels), and the sport reached an apex when Sheffield played Hallam FC on Boxing Day 1857.

Within five years, fifteen clubs had been established, and the games were played in front of crowds of hundreds of people. The Sheffield Club created its own rules in 1862, and the most notable part was that there was no mention of offside. 

By 1872, passing, which was known as "united action," really took hold, and it could be traces to the England-Scotland game, which was played at Partick, the West of Scotland cricket ground. England's lineup had a "goal," a "three-quarter back," a "halfback," a fly-kick," four players listed as "middle," two on the "left side," and one "right side," which Wilson deduces was a 1-7-2 formation.

To jump ahead a century, Wilson saw the tactical influence of the Brazilian team at the 1970 Mexico World Cup, which is when they were at their heyday led by Pele, as revolutionary. They had a disappointing performance in the prior World Cup, which Wilson reveals led Pele to briefly retire from international competition.

In preparation for this World Cup, in a quest to be in better physical condition, the players were put through a NASA training program. In detailing where Pele was positioned, he was regarded as the center-forward, but it seemed that if the other big star on the team, Tostao, was also put up front, they could switch off. 

As with all of the formations Wilson describes, there are graphics accompanying the analysis, which in this case with Brazil was necessary because, as he describes it, "Was it 4-4-2, was it 4-3-3, was it 4-2-4, was it even 4-5-1? It was all of them and none of them; it was just players on a pitch who complemented each other perfectly. In modern parlance, it would probably have been described as a 4-2-3-1, but such subtleties meant nothing then."

Then, in what Wilson called "arguably the best tournament of the modern era," Euro 2000, he examines how Italy, the runner-up to a France squad led by Thierry Henry and Zinedine Zidane, ran a 3-4-1-2, which was a very defensive-minded system called "broken team" was developed. In essence, there were three attacking players, and seven left back for defense. The descriptions of the teams that competed in that Euro will bring you back, as England was led by David Beckham, Steve McManaman, and Paul Scholes, the Netherlands had Dennis Bergkamp, and Portugal starred Luis Figo.

In this excerpt, Wilson writes of how he views soccer as the sum of its parts: "I don't believe tactics are the only thing that determines how a side plays and I don't believe tactics are always the most important aspect in how a side plays and I don't believe tactics are always the most important aspect in how a game works out. Rather they are one aspect among many -  a neglected one perhaps - but just one thread, alongside ability, fitness, motivation, power and luck, in an immensely complex tapestry. Not only that, but I don't believe tactics can be separated from the other aspects: a physically fit team must play in a different way to a tired team, a team low on confidence perhaps needs to play in a more cautious style, a team that includes dilettantish players must set up in a way to cover those deficiencies: everything is related.

Equally, designations of formations can at times seem a little arbitrary. Just how far behind the main striker does the second striker have to play for 4-4-2 to become 4-4-1-1? And how advanced do the wide midfielders have to be for that to become a 4-2-3-1? And if the support striker then pulls a little deeper and the wide men advance, is that still 4-2-3-1 or has it become 4-2-1-3 or even 4-3-3? Given full-backs often push high, so their average position places them level with the holding midfielders, why don't we classify some 4-2-3-1s as 2-4-3-1? The terms essentially are shorthand, often rooted in convention as much as actuality, a useful if slightly crude way of giving a basic idea of a line-up.

In tactics there are few absolutes. There certainly is no 'best' formation, something I've been asked about repeatedly. While there must be a basic balance of attack and defense, everything depends on circumstance: on the players available, on their physical and mental state, on the conditions, on form, on what a side wants from a game - and, of course, on the opposition and their players, formation and physical and mental state. Not merely is everything related; everything is relative."